Jimmy's garden on the Lower East Side of Manhattan - an assortment of stones and garbage bags, five tires, a chair, a skid, a refrigerator shelf, some ailanthus trees and goldfish, a wooden fence, and a pond with water carried by hand from a nearby fire hydrant - was recently bulldozed by the city. Jimmy then disappeared. Anna's garden is surrounded by a tall chainlink fence and filled with a menagerie of dolls and stuffed animals. The animals are whole, the dolls are maimed. Anna is a recluse who speaks to no one. The neighbors say she was in a concentration camp as a child. Gardens have always been associated with wealth and leisure, viewed as an addition to home. In this remarkable book a landscape architect and a photographer show us, in word and pictures, gardens built by homeless or impoverished New York City inhabitants. Like traditional gardens, these spaces are designed for pleasure, social activity, or private retreat. Unlike traditional gardens, they are connected to an active and ephemeral use of the land. Transitory gardens speak the language of our times: here we find the reuse of nearly everything discarded, a sparing use of water and plant materials, an economical treatment of space, and a penchant for icons, toys, flags, and symbols of freedom and nationality. The gardens expand our definition of what makes a garden and what its design means for its creator. Diana Balmori's commentary and Margaret Morton's photographs combine with the gardenmakers' own descriptions to encourage us to take note of gardens grown in unlikely places, on abandoned, littered lots, bounded by debris. By focusing on what homeless people make not for material comfort but from social and spiritual need, the book offers insight into both the meaning of landscape and the place of a garden in the life of an individual under duress.

Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives

Morton, Ms. Margaret

Balmori, Ms. Diana

Arts & Photography

Yale University Press

The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City (Architecture of Despair)

One of the oldest surviving homeless communities in New York City has been hidden from public view in an underground train tunnel for more than twenty years. Residents dwell in continual darkness along the two-and-one-half-mile stretch, which is penetrated only by shafts of light angling through air vents. The residents who have been there longest live alongside the tracks in cinder-block bunkers originally used by railroad personnel. Other residents are hidden high above the tracks in recessed niches that are accessible only by a precarious climb. More recent tunnel dwellers have built freestanding structures in the dark alcoves of the tunnel or perched themselves on concrete ledges. This book, the first in a planned three-volume series documenting the lives and living spaces of New York City's homeless population, is narrated entirely by the tunnel residents. The Architecture of Despair series will combine Margaret Morton's photographs with excerpts from six years of audiotaped oral histories to create a unique archive of extraordinary individuals living in an extraordinary social, political, and economic condition.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Examines the lives of some of New York City's homeless citizens, who have set up a unique community in an Amtrak tunnel under the West Side Highway

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Morton, Ms. Margaret. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Morton, Ms. Margaret

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Morton, Ms. Margaret. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives

The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City (Architecture of Despair)

The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City (Architecture of Despair)